The Trump Administration has shown it will stop at nothing to undermine access to health care for marginalized communities. Most recently, the Administration has proposed to undermine critical protections against sex discrimination in Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, the Health Care Rights Law. Instead of combatting discrimination in accessing health care and insurance coverage, the Administration is looking for any opportunity to weaken the Health Care Rights Law’s protections, which have been life saving for many transgender and non-binary people.

Under the Trump Administration, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has abandoned its duty to fight against discrimination in health care. It stopped defending existing regulations in a lawsuit attacking protections for transgender individuals and people who have obtained abortions. HHS then turned around and cited that very lawsuit as a reason for changing the regulations. But HHS cannot use its failure to defend current protections as a reason to gut them.

The proposed rule removes explicit protections for transgender, non-binary, and gender nonconforming people, as well as for people seeking, or who have obtained, services related to pregnancy, childbirth, and abortion. The Administration has made clear that a central goal of the proposed changes is to excise transgender people from the protections of the Health Care Rights Law. Though their intent has been to “erase” transgender people, the Administration can neither erase transgender people from existing statutory protections nor exclude them from society. 

Case after case has confirmed that transgender people are protected under the Health Care Rights Law—and that is something the Administration cannot change even if this rule is finalized.

This isn’t just about definitions, though. This rule is yet another attempt by the Trump administration to undermine our nation’s antidiscrimination laws. The proposed rule would also: eliminate protections ensuring that people who have limited English proficiency are aware of their health care rights; narrow the list of health insurance providers covered by the Health Care Rights Law and prohibited from discriminating based on race, national origin, age, disability, or sex; and give religiously-affiliated health care institutions a broad license to discriminate on the basis of sex.

Even though one in six hospital beds in the United States is in a Catholic hospital, and the number of religious health care providers is only growing, the Administration wants to lift prohibitions on religious health care institutions discriminating based on a patient’s sex.

The proposed rule continues the Trump Administration’s mission to undermine access to health care for marginalized communities. So far they want to deprive people of coverage for contraceptives, decimate family planning services, dramatically expand the ability of health care institutions and workers to refuse to provide medical services, and penalize access to health care by immigrant women and children.

Transgender people already face threats of violence and discrimination in all aspects of their lives and the Trump Administration is inviting more. The Administration is intent on emboldening discriminatory and dangerous denials of care for transgender individuals. They have already banned transgender members of the military from openly serving and accessing certain critical medical procedures, reversed positions as to whether federal law protects transgender people from workplace discrimination, and proposed allowing taxpayer-funded shelters to turn away transgender people experiencing homelessness.

Despite these attacks by the Trump Administration we will continue to fight to ensure equal access to health care and coverage, free from discriminatory treatment or denials. For all these reasons, tens of thousands of people are telling HHS to abandon the proposed rule, and to keep the current Health Care Rights Law regulations in place – and I hope you join us in doing so.

Lindsey Kaley, Staff Attorney, ACLU

Date

Friday, August 9, 2019 - 3:30pm

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On Thursday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit became the first appellate court in the nation to directly address the privacy harms posed by face recognition technology. The decision is a significant advance in the fight against the threats of face surveillance, sounding the alarm on the potential for this technology to seriously violate people’s privacy.

In Patel v. Facebook, a group of Facebook users from Illinois allege that Facebook violated the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) by using face recognition technology on the users’ photographs without their knowledge and consent. BIPA is the oldest and strongest biometric privacy law in the country, requiring companies to obtain informed consent before collecting a person’s biometric identifiers, including face recognition scans. Importantly, the law provides individuals in Illinois with a right to sue for damages if a company has violated their rights.

Facebook’s primary argument in the case was that in order to establish “standing” to sue, the plaintiffs should have to demonstrate some concrete injury beyond a violation of BIPA's requirement of notice and consent. As we argued in an amicus brief last year, surreptitious use of face recognition technology does cause harm, by subjecting people to unwanted tracking and by leaving them vulnerable to data breaches and invasive surveillance. Given the rapid proliferation of face surveillance technology in recent years, it is critical that Illinoisans are able to enforce BIPA’s protections against unwanted collection of their biometric information. A requirement that a person must demonstrate monetary loss or similar injury in order to sue would seriously undermine BIPA’s intent to safeguard against abusive collection of biometric data in the first place.

In Thursday’s ruling the Ninth Circuit agreed, holding that “the development of a face template using facial-recognition technology without consent (as alleged here) invades an individual’s private affairs and concrete interests.” 

To reach that conclusion, the court looked not only to the long-recognized entitlement of people to sue private parties over violations of common-law privacy rights, but also to evolving Fourth Amendment protections against law enforcement surveillance. This includes the landmark decision in Carpenter v. United States, an ACLU case about police access to cell phone location data decided last year. As the Ninth Circuit explained, drawing from language in Carpenter, “[i]n its recent Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, the Supreme Court has recognized that advances in technology can increase the potential for unreasonable intrusions into personal privacy… As in the Fourth Amendment context, the facial-recognition technology at issue here can obtain information that is ‘detailed, encyclopedic, and effortlessly compiled,’ which would be almost impossible without such technology.”

The Ninth Circuit’s ruling is important not only because it explains why surreptitious use of face recognition by corporations harms people’s privacy interests, but also because it puts law enforcement on notice that recent Supreme Court cases regulating other forms of electronic surveillance have something to say about face surveillance technology.

Indeed, the potential for this technology to enable the government to pervasively identify and track anyone (and everyone) as they go about their daily lives is one of the reasons the ACLU is urging lawmakers across the country to halt law enforcement use of face surveillance systems. This decision puts both corporations and law enforcement agencies on notice that face surveillance technology poses unique risks to people’s privacy and safety.

The Ninth Circuit’s ruling also demonstrates the importance of privacy laws including strong private rights of action, affirming people’s right to turn to the federal courts for redress when their rights have been violated. Without a right to sue, privacy guarantees will often prove ephemeral. As state legislatures and Congress move forward on consumer privacy legislation, they should follow Illinois’ lead by including private rights of action in these statutes.

Nathan Freed Wessler, Staff Attorney, ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project

Date

Friday, August 9, 2019 - 4:00pm

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Public outcry and protests in Puerto Rico brought on the resignation of Governor Ricardo Rosselló, the successor he appointed — former politician and lawyer Pedro Pierluisi — had to step down yesterday. The Puerto Rico Supreme Court unanimously decided that appointing Pierluisi as governor without Senate confirmation is unconstitutional. Wanda Vázquez, the former secretary of justice, took the oath as governor before the end of day yesterday. Puerto Ricans are now in a new period of doubt in its leadership, with many wondering how long the seemingly unpopular Vázquez might be governor.

After a month of nonstop developments, protests have continued in the island. It all began when hundreds of thousands of protesters were unleashed onto the streets of Puerto Rico, cities across the U.S., and many other countries populated by the island’s ever-growing diaspora decrying former Gov. Rosselló. Why? Because on July 13, the contents of a Telegram group chat managed by Rosselló were leaked to the public, and immediately led to mass protests calling for his resignation. Days before, federal agents began a series of arrests after a grand jury handed down corruption indictments against a government official and contractors. Arrests are likely slated to continue.

A general strike was declared on July 24, resulting in an estimated 1.1 million people peacefully protesting across the island. People affiliated with all local political parties, Democrats and Republicans, single mothers, the elderly, people with disabilities, all stood shoulder to shoulder with thousands of young people, the LGBTQ community, and women protesting in the streets. The crowd of protestors was enormous, over 500,000 occupying 12 lanes of the Luis Ferré Highway just in San Juan, the capital, and saturating other major towns and cities with people. To put the magnitude of the protest into perspective, close to one-third of Puerto Rico’s population was estimated to be present for the general strike.

The protests went on for days and were sustained by the perseverance and creativity of our people. People danced, sang, and even went scuba diving in protest. People prayed, practiced yoga, and banged pots and pans all night in protest.

For over a week, ACLU of Puerto Rico legal observers worked around the clock to ensure that the people’s right to protest was protected. Our volunteers and staff were caught in the middle of violence initiated by the Puerto Rico police acting as political agents of the governor. Unfortunately, blood was shed almost nightly for days. ACLU observers documented the excessive use of force against protesters and immediately and publicly called out the government for failing its promises to reform the police.

Protesters were expressing their indignation with the ongoing corruption scandals and the offensive, misogynistic, homophobic, and grossly insensitive rants in the chat messages by the governor’s male associates — and Rosselló himself. The governor and cabinet members joked about shooting political enemies. They did not even spare the victims of Hurricane Maria from their mockery, while many families are still trying to claim the bodies of their loved ones.

When the chats leaked, we the people of Puerto Rico got a close and personal look at our government officials. What we saw was the inner workings of a government that disrespected its own people. The Telegram “Chat-gate” added insult to injury and became the spark that jumpstarted a peaceful revolution. It was the first time in Puerto Rico’s history that a governor resigned.

But it was not just about the leaked chats. Frustration with historic colonial repression, the fiscal oversight board appointed by Washington, and the incompetence and corruption of its government was the last straw for many Puerto Ricans. The Rosselló administration did little to stop the pilfering and years of corruption that eventually left U.S. citizens in Puerto Rico with no essential services for months, even years, after Hurricane Maria. Institutions were left to collapse, and the money needed for post-Maria recuperation and rebuilding was simply not there. The Rosselló administration exacerbated the suffering of the poor, the elderly and the disabled.

Even while working to recuperate from the devastation of the hurricane, politicians and the members of the board continued to hand out lucrative, multimillion-dollar contracts to their friends and cronies. All while schools and medical services were shutting down. Puerto Rico’s Department of Education handed out millions of dollars in contracts, while it shut down hundreds of schools and privatized others. Children with disabilities and their families had to leave the island to get much-needed care. This is just one example of many. In return, families saw themselves separated and dispersed across the United States and several countries. It has been Puerto Rico’s largest exodus since the 1950s.

We are still watching history unfold, and it is likely that the revolution and protests have not ended. Puerto Ricans have awakened from over 500-years of colonial oppression to the realization that power truly lays within us, its people. We are no longer willing to remain silent when our leaders spew hate and corruption.

William Ramirez, ACLU of Puerto Rico


Read More

Hurricane Maria Exposed the U.S.’s Long Neglect of Puerto Rico
President Trump’s Response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico Confirms Second-Class Citizenship

Date

Thursday, August 8, 2019 - 10:15am

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